Stellar [XLM] – Coinbase Adds Support for Stellar Lumens on Its Pro Platform

Stellar’s Lumens [XLM] token is the latest addition to Coinbase’s elite selection of digital assets available for trade on its professional platform Coinbase Pro (formally GDAX). As of yesterday March 13th at 13.00 PT Coinbase enabled XLM deposits prior to enabling trades and transfers to ensure sufficient levels of XLM liquidity.

In an announcement by Coinbase, the deposits will be allowed for at least 12 hours before trading is also supported. Once liquidity has been established, trading will be enabled for the USD, EUR and BTC pairings.

The announcement reads in part that

“Once sufficient supply of XLM is established on the platform, trading on the XLM/USD, XLM/EUR, and XLM/BTC order books will start in phases, beginning with post-only mode and proceeding to full trading should our metrics for a healthy market be met.”

It’s worth noting that XLM is not yet available on the retail platform of Coinbase.com nor its mobile Coinbasewallets for both Android and iOS. That may be enabled later but for now, only users of the Coinbase Pro platform will be able to access XLM trading facilities.

In addition, XLM trading will be available in all jurisdictions supporting the trade of cryptocurrencies through Coinbase except the state of New York. According to the announcement, more jurisdictions are expected to be added much later.

This announcement comes weeks after Coinbase also enabled the support of Ripple’s XRP token which resulted in a backlash from a faction of the Coinbase users. Part of that backlash was due to the fact that XRP did not meet all the requirements to be listed on the platform.

In a Diar report from last month, the blockchain research firm proved that Ripple does not fulfill one requirement in Coinbase’s Digital Asset Framework, which spells out the factors that Coinbase looks at to determine which asset gets supported on the platform.

The requirement is that for an asset to qualify for listing, the team supporting the project must have a minority stake of the token’s total circulating supply which XRP, unfortunately, does not meet as Ripple holds at least 60% of the available XRP.